DD’s Monthly Expense Checkup – October 2008

Here is the latest installment of my family’s monthly expenses. Below are the results from October:

  • $830.00 – Mortgage
  • $771.00 – Daycare
  • $675.00 – Life Insurance
  • $499.75 – Groceries
  • $170.00 – PPST Test (for school)
  • $159.68 – Utilities (water, sewer, & garbage billed quarterly)
  • $156.80 – Gas
  • $152.77 – Household Misc
  • $149.94 – Contacts
  • $125.00 – Student Loan
  • $115.75 – Phone & Internet
  • $111.71 – Electricity
  • $85.47 – Dining Out
  • $51.93 – Dog Food
  • $49.12 – Kid stuff
  • $41.00 – Clothes
  • $40.00 – Medical bills
  • $15.00 – Donations
  • $12.00 – Haircut
For a grand total this month of $4211.94!
Nuts, we’re back over $4,000.   What happened?
Biggest Budget Busters:
  1. $675.00 – Life Insurance –  This is a once a year expense for both the Mrs & I.  It’s not really fair to pin all of the expense to October, but whoever said “life was fair”.
  2. $499.75 – Groceries – We’re getting too close to the $500 level for my comfort.  But I have good news. My daughter’s food allergies have weakened enough so we no longer have to avoid wheat & dairy.  This should help lower the cost of groceries going forward.
  3. $170.00 – PPST Test – This is a college related expense.  I have to pass this test in order to be enrolled in the school of education…I sure hope it’s easy, I don’t want to take it again.
Biggest Budget Breakthroughs:
  1. $149.94 – Contacts – Even though this seems like a lot, I really ended up saving a nice chunk of change.  in fact, I think I’ll write more about this in a future post.
  2. $111.71 – Electricity – I marked this under a breakthrough because this bill covers the month of September (paid in Oct) in which we didn’t run either the AC or Heat.   In a couple of months this will be much higher (as I write this we are getting out first blizzard of the season…maybe tomorrow will be a snow day?)
  3. $41.00 – Clothes – I included this for a couple of reasons: 1)  This has been the first time we’ve spent anything on clothes since I’ve been tracking our expenses. 2) We got quite a haul for what we spent: Two polo shirts and a pair of pants for me and a pair of boots for my wife.  But the biggest thing was I got a new wallet.    I’ve needed a new one for years, but I just couldn’t part with my old one.  Like George from Seinfeld, I had everything in there.  It was hard to pare down, but I have to say I love my new wallet.
In other news…I have to say I don’t think paying cash has been saving me much money yet.  At least not in October.  I’ll probably dissect the figures and report back to you in a future post.  I’m sure you’ll all be waiting with bated breath…
Until next time,
-DD

7 Comments

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *